期刊
PLOS ONE
卷 2, 期 6, 页码 -出版社
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000556
关键词
-
资金
- Natural Environment Research Council [NER/A/S/2003/00469]
- German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) [Ch 147/3-1]
- Natural Environment Research Council [NER/A/S/2003/00469] Funding Source: researchfish
Innate sensory biases could play an important role in helping naive animals to find food. As inexperienced bees are known to have strong innate colour biases we investigated whether bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies with stronger biases for the most rewarding flower colour (violet) foraged more successfully in their local flora. To test the adaptive significance of variation in innate colour bias, we compared the performance of colour-naive bees, from nine bumblebee colonies raised from local wild-caught queens, in a laboratory colour bias paradigm using violet (bee UV-blue) and blue (bee blue) artificial flowers. The foraging performance of the same colonies was assessed under field conditions. Colonies with a stronger innate bias for violet over blue flowers in the laboratory harvested more nectar per unit time under field conditions. In fact, the colony with the strongest bias for violet (over blue) brought in 41% more nectar than the colony with the least strong bias. As violet flowers in the local area produce more nectar than blue flowers (the next most rewarding flower colour), these data are consistent with the hypothesis that local variation in flower traits could drive selection for innate colour biases.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据